I can remember reading in Peter Golenbock’s book “Bums” (about the Brooklyn Dodgers) concerning people he interviewed that one of the chief things that they remembered of the funny old ballpark (Ebbets Field in Brooklyn) was the distinctive, rich smell of baseball about the place back in the 1930s and 1940s.
Does anyone here remember that sort of thing about the older ballparks (Wrigley, Old Comiskey Park, Tiger Stadium, Yankee Stadium before renovations in 1974, Fenway, Crosley, Forbes, etc)? Or about the older NHL rinks like Chicago Stadium, Boston Garden, Detroit Olympia?
#1. A 10 day backcountry backpacking trip with no shower.
He needs to work on his manliness coefficient. 318cc -- LOL. Eight thimble-size pistons isn't going to impress many.
Sawdust in the wood shop.
Fresh turned earth on a construction site.
I always liked the smell of an underground mine. Wet rock, timbers, machinery, some lingering traces of the last blast...nothing quite like it.
Construction site had it buried.
Creosote.
.
Hoppes #9!!!!!!!!
Boraxo soap, Diesel fuel, Welding smoke, sawdust, used bolt bin smell. Gun powder, Gun oil, fishing smell, deer guts!
What is overwhelmingly attractive is, these smells on my wife. Well, okay, hold the deer guts.
Oh, and add leather!
Get lots of unsolicited thumbs up from females when I wear Paul Sebastian (PS) aftershave.
I would add pine trees
Just the picture of Aqua Velva reminds me of the scent of my dad, gone 20 years now. Thanks for the vivid and lovely memory.
Gun oil and powder solvent, two of my favorites.
Diesel tractor, combination of metal, engine oil, hydraulic oil, diesel fuel, diesel exhaust all combined but diluted by the smell of soil and fresh farm air.
I love the smell of old machinery and electronics. You can find that smell in old machine tools, any mechanical contrivance like a typewriter, a jukebox, a clock, a keypunch, a line printer, a teletype, and a vast number of other devices.
Some electric motors have their own unique smell, like the mixer my mom had when I was a kid. Likewise, tube electronics have their own unique smell when cold, and a completely different smell when running.
You have a medley of aromas of oil, grease, wax, paint, varnish, lacquers, phenolics, canvas, rubber, various plastics, and old insulated wires.
A military surplus shop has all those smells, plus a lot more, one of the most unique smells you will ever encounter!
Can’t beat machine oil.
The smell of the old, diesel-powered submarines and the coffee with the taste and smell of diesel oil and hydraulic oil.
Locktite.
Tastes terrible though.
I would add Barbicide, that stuff used in men’s barbershops to disinfect. A related scent would be Gillette’s barbershop scent Foamy.
I would also add an old style computer room with 45 degree air conditioning and an old school mini computer (fridge size PDP or Harris) to a main frame — its own ozony tech-electronic burning-something smell. A rack of DECtapes or reel tapes adds to the aroma. Even women in IT are to this day rarely found in the hardware server area in modern data centers. If there are serveral dozen racks full of servers a weaker version of the scent still can be detected.
GOJO or similar hand soap, the kind that keels like it has ground up glass in and has its own citrus/chemical smell.
